DIY – A Command Center For Your Family

True-love believer, mom of 4, DIY kind of woman, family roadtrip recidivist, business owner, home decoration and renovation aficionado, technology, beauty products and accessories junky, creativity and liberty craver, country music and southern lifestyle addict, beach potato and part-time blogger trying to balance everything good in her life.

A family command center is useful and makes a great decor addition when well done.

Command centers are all over Instagram and Pinterest. When I started seeing those I knew I needed to replace my messy bulletin board with one. Since I have four children, all our hectic schedules are often hard to follow. We have got paper, sticky notes, calendars, appointment notices all over the place. I tried to use a bulletin board but it was always messy at the end. And I had such a hard time finding the right information at the right moment that I decided it was time for a positive change in our household.

How Do You Make A Great Command Center

Our family command center

You can either start from inspiration pictures you see on the Internet or start from scratch. In either case, look at many command centers on Instagram of Pinterest to see what you like and

dislike, what you need and don’t need, what works for you and what doesn’t.

Blackboard for the kids to draw on

Choose A Color Accent

In my case, I took aqua as the main color for my project. A few items here and there must remind you of your color accebt but not too much because it will be overwhelming and you will be tired to look at your wall. Another thing, if you put your color accent sparingly, if you want to refresh your command center in the future, you only have to change the color accent and tadam! it feels new again. The same strategy is also good in your bathroom: you change the toothbrushes cup, soap dispenser and rug and no need to repaint, you feel like you have a brand new decor! Kitchen accessories, sofa cushions, you can use the color accent trick everywhere in the house.

Choose your accessories

Ask yourself the question: what do I need? What would be useful for my family? What could help me being more organized and more efficient in my every day life?

Building Your Family Command Center

Here is a list of items you could include in your command center:

A motivational quote: Almost every example I looked at included a motivational quote. I thought it was a great idea. It is always fun for your family to have something inspiring to look at. The great news is that it is easy to find motivational quotes in home decor stores, and pretty much everywhere.

The Motivational Quote we chose

A family portrait: A family command center is not fully complete without a picture of your family (or your children!).

A monthly calendar: you can use big monthly calendars (a paper version or a white-board
Dry-erase calendar made with a picture frame and some fabrics

template) you find in office stores, or you can make one yourself. For mine I used a frame (about 18 x 24 inches). I use a cute owl fabric in the back (think accent color) to make it cuter and less drab. I draw the template with a permanent pen (Sharpie) on the inside of the glass. This way when I write on the outside and erase afterwards, I do not need to draw the template all over again. That will be the center piece of your command center, so don’t go boring!

A dry-erase board, chalk board, magnets board or bulletin board: This board will be usefull to take note, to stick your sticky notes, to make to do lists. You can use different
A picture frame that became a dry-erase board and can be useful for sticky notes too.

kindds of boards. You can buy some at the store. You can also DIY your boards. In my case, I use a picture frame as a dry-erase board. It does the same thing but it looks better. Since it is a 3-section frame, I put three different fabrics behind each section. A bit of hot glue and it is all done. Another thing you can do it paint the inside of the glass. I used to have a bulletin board in the past but it got all messy like ALL the time. So now I opt for a no-mess board.

A board for the kids: In my house, if I don’t provide something for the kids to write on, I know they will write on my stuff. So I decided to put a black chalk board at the bottom of my command center. This way they don’t feel left out and they have a place for themselves. It is a win-win situation.

Clipboards: Clipboards can be pretty useful. On the big ones I use them to display my children’s school schedule and
Clipboards are so useful – big or small don’t forget to include one or many of these.

calendar or document I need to refer to more often. I also include a page with important phone numbers so my children and the babysitter can refer to in case of need or emergency. On the little ones, I clip a white paper pad so I can take note I need to bring with me (for example, grocery list), or note to my children’s teachers.

Clock: Most command center I looked at had a clock somewhere on their wall. i din’t use one since my oven clock is just next to it. But if you do not have any clock around, it is a good idea to have one on your wall.

Baskets, file folders or wall organizers: It is useful to include some kind of wall organizer
Wall folders, baskets, hooks, are all items that can be useful in your project.

in your command center. As long as you can fix it to the wall and it is big enough toreceived letter size document, than you are good. I had trouble finding what I was looking for so I used wood box you can buy almost anywhere, spray painted them with my accent color and cut them in half to fix them to the wall (full size boxes would have been to big). Since I was unable to insert a box per kid, I cut them on the lenght side so I can fit two kids per box.

A pencil cup: Always useful to have your pencils at
You ALWAYS need a pencils cup

reach and not looking for them. This item is like a no-brainer.

Hooks: You can also include hooks on your wall. Your children can easily put their backpacks on those or their lunch boxes.

There are so much items you can put on your board. Some have a section per individual int he family. In our case, we are six, and the wall we used is not that big, so we would not have been able to install six different sections on our wall. When the kids will grow up, I will see if I need to make some changes to my wall but right now it is just perfect for our family needs.

Some Extra

My husband and I decided we would install our command center on a wood planks faux-wall. We bought a big piece of plywood board and cut it the size we needed it. Them with a skill saw we cut (just on the surface) horizontal lines mimicking real wood planks. We stained the board so it would look like used wood. Then we fixed all our command center items on this wood planks faux-wall. I love the look!

The Cost Of A DIY Command Center

The picture frame we transformed in a dry-erase board

You can invest a lot of money in your command center, but you can also do it the DIY way and save some money. It is also very fun to do. It doesn’t take very long. First thing you have to figure out what you are going to include our your wall and how you are going to set-up everything. After that you get to go shopping which is kind of fun. The last step is to build your command center.

Family Command Centers Examples

If you need inspiration, you can either Google your search, look on Pinterest or # on Instagram.